


before it buries me

by essektheylyss (midnightindigo)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: And then they kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, post-episode 91, so obviously spoilers for 91
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22300936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightindigo/pseuds/essektheylyss
Summary: When something goes wrong, Essek shuts himself away. It's what he's always done. It's what has kept him safe.But safety is not always a good way to live.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 21
Kudos: 379





	before it buries me

**Author's Note:**

> Essek needs therapy, Caleb needs therapy, I need therapy. Everybody needs therapy, but this is the next best thing, right?
> 
> Title is from "Cold Is The Night" by the Oh Hellos.

Their plans were abruptly shelved as they returned to their strange, tree-laden house in the middle of the neighborhood, where he can see it from the top of his tower when he rests against the doorframe high over the ground in the dark.

It is, in fact, night time now, though the sky, as usual, hasn’t changed.

Essek sips stronger liquor than the wine he brought to dinner last night as he stares at that tree, with its ever-glowing lights that illuminate the roof like a fairy garden. 

The elves might have fairy blood, but if someone had told him the Mighty Nein had walked fully formed out of the Feywild, he’d have believed it in a heartbeat.

The spell should’ve worked. It would’ve, he reminds himself, over and over again in his worry, had it not been from the curse of a woman Nott couldn’t quite remember enough to trace. Only her laugh, one that had reverberated through time and perhaps space, if their failed spell had awoken something in her to their presence here, into both her and Caleb’s minds.

“A fucking curse,” he hisses, and takes another sip of his drink. His feet hover inches above the floor, even all the way up here, always the feeling of being in some kind of spotlight. Closed in his tower, with the lights just bright enough to read by, then sometimes he can find some peace, but even here there might be someone watching. That hypothetical keeps him _off_ his toes.

The elation of the breakthrough had been sliced through like someone had taken a carving knife to his heart; the shattering of the spell had sent him reeling. Not physically, of course—no, the moment something had gone wrong all of his harsh edges had returned, the stone of his exterior settling back into place, and having that softness ripped from him was like fingers of ice around his heart.

It was so cold here, even now that spring was returning to Rosohna, and it felt like someone had hammered that ice into his chest.

Why was it so hard to keep himself open? Was it only that coldness was all he’d known since his father’s death, icy professionalism creating a divide between himself and his den, or was it just that he’d never known real warmth to begin with? In the dark, Rosohna was cold even in midsummer, and that extended much further into the hearts of the drow than they’d like to admit. When they lived so long, they could afford to be choosy about who they let into their circles, and he had not lived as long as most. 

In lieu of personal approval he had risen through the ranks like a good soldier, with all the responsibility and illusion of an advisor in a monarchy. And now he was here, where he’d intended to be, with nothing more than too much work and no one to talk to openly, and the moment he had found that something had gone wrong.

He was being selfish, he knew—it hadn’t been about him, but he couldn’t help but think that every little mistake, every little difficulty, created a further wedge between him and the people he was unable to be of use to.

He’d helped them craft an incantation that had failed. What use was he now, in a fight against an unknown foreign witch, when he was needed here in Rosohna, or on the Menagerie Coast for the peace talks? 

It is so much later than he’d like it to be, but he does not think he expected to get much sleep tonight anyway. He downs the rest of his drink and steps inside, letting the door close and lock behind him.

A soft chiming echoes in his head before he’s taken more than a few steps, and in an instant he’s passed to the bottom of the tower as though time had transported him there, opening the door in time to see a red-haired wizard sheepishly holding his hand out to the gate, components in his hand.

“Are you breaking into my house?” Essek asks, colder than he would like, his apathetic exterior overtaking his better judgment. 

Caleb has the decency to blush. “Sending is not a spell I have at my disposal. And I was unsure how to contact you from here.”

Essek can’t bring himself to say anything, can’t bring himself to show his hand. He’s not sure what cards he’s holding, but he learned his poker face early enough that it’s long since become second nature.

But finally he realizes that the silence has stretched too long and too thin. He’s dancing on a wire from which all of the dunamancy in the world can’t prevent him from falling. 

“Did you need something?” he asks casually, voice perfectly light, and realizes that Caleb hasn’t stepped over the threshold into his freshly dug yard. “Do you want to come in?”

Caleb nods, his shoulders tight and his fingers playing over his bandaged arms, and Essek thinks he might be out on a wire all his own. He has seen only glimpses of Caleb’s past, but knows that there is only pain there. 

It is no wonder he has such an interest in time magic. 

“Please,” Essek says, and sweeps a hand toward the door, stepping aside from the path to let Caleb pass. It’s uncomfortable in the silence, and he wishes he had more to say. He does have more to say, as a matter of fact— _how’s Nott, are you okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I couldn’t have done more to help_ —but he can’t will the words to fall from his lips. They’re stuck in his throat like a caged bird, even though there is no lock on his mouth and no real barrier to block their escape.

Much like him, he muses, shut away in a tower of his own design. He has escaped the confines of his comfort zone once this week, and perhaps that is the issue. The quota of risks he’s willing to take has been fulfilled, and here he is, unable even to muster up his air of confidence that he wears so naturally, if not easily, in the Bastion. 

No, all he is right now is a husk, but that’s okay, because Caleb is not acting much different as he shuffles past, and Essek can see the remnants of an old version of him, all nerves and a deep sadness that goes well behind his eyes. The Caleb who pulled pranks on Fjord just yesterday and who giddily poured over spell equations this afternoon is still there, but that Caleb is sharing space with every other person he has ever been, and sometimes it is easier to see those than it is to see the man in front of him. 

Potentials can be distracting, Essek knows. Distracting and alluring, when they are what you want. 

He wants to take Caleb’s pain away. He wants to fix Nott so both of them can smile again. He wants to be of use. Otherwise, what is the point of him?

He lets them both into the house, into the hosting chamber where the Mighty Nein had congregated so recently, and Caleb hasn’t even sat down yet when he asks, “What is wrong?”

Essek blinks, stopped with his hand resting on the doorknob. “What?”

“Something is wrong, ja?” Caleb asks, and looks him up and down. “You are, ahem, floating.”

Essek looks down at his feet, hovering several inches above the floor. He hadn’t even noticed. It was a rote movement by now. It happened on instinct as he passed through his front door, a shield from prying eyes and court—family—intrigue. “Merely habit.”

His feet come to rest on the floor. 

“I admit,” Caleb says, and the smallest smile plays on his mouth, and Essek’s heart can’t help but warm slightly at the sight of it. He imagines that might be what sunlight feels like, to one other than a drow. “I came here because the atmosphere in the Xhorhaus was very grim by the time my friends got to sleep, and was hoping you might be in a better mood. But it seems that we are all similarly affected tonight.”

Essek rubs a hand over his eyes and sinks into one of the chairs as Caleb sits adjacent; with a quick incantation, a mage hand brings the bottle from which he’d already been drinking, along with two fresh glasses, and pours them both a drink.

“It would seem so,” he admits, as he takes a sip.

With a puckered frown of his lips and a dimpling of his forehead, scattering and wrinkling his freckles, Caleb leans forward toward him, their knees near touching. “Are you sure you’re alright, otherwise? You seem… closed, again.”

Essek’s eyes shift to him briefly, flickering over his worried gaze and tensed muscles. If Essek is a caged bird, Caleb is a wounded cat. 

With that thought, he can’t help but wonder if Caleb is toying with him, and his heart can’t bear the thought. The frost settles back in.

He takes another drink.

“I am disappointed that the spell didn’t work,” he says coolly, and doesn’t meet Caleb’s eyes. “I am disappointed I was not able to help.”

Caleb breathes out a laugh, one that takes Essek by surprise, with its disbelief. At first he thinks Caleb is laughing at him, and he bristles, burrowing his hands deep beneath his robes to put another few layers between them, but when he turns to confront him, Caleb exhales shakily, eyebrows drawn together and eyes glinting soft blue in the candlelight in the room, as deep as an ocean. 

He’s never been good at resisting the depths of anything that looked at him like that.

“We would not have completed the spell without your help,” Caleb insists, and when Essek opens his mouth to protest, he waves him off. “Not this quickly, certainly. And who knows what other complications may have arisen without knowledge of the curse, had we continued to throw ourselves headlong into danger?”

Essek makes a noncommittal noise, rebuffed. He can’t bring himself to ask why Caleb is here, why he’s still sitting in his sitting room if all he found was an extension of the melancholy within his circle of friends. All he wants is for Caleb to continue sitting here with him, some semblance of company that Essek has never known. It is a companionship that the Mighty Nein have mastered amongst themselves, and that they seem to dispense without rhyme or reason upon individuals they’ve deemed worthy—somehow, by whatever chaotic standards they have in place. Essek has never known how to evaluate anyone’s worth except with regards to their use to the dynasty, including his own.

“Essek,” Caleb says, like a question, one that he wants to dissect and analyze and answer, if Essek doesn’t answer for himself. “Do you think you have not helped us today?” 

“I think,” he has to swallow down a lump in his throat, one that is increasingly harder to push aside the later it gets, “I think that I have not helped enough.”

“We don’t want you around merely for the help you can give us,” Caleb insists, and his voice is so soft that it nearly floats away before it can reach Essek’s incredulous ears. “A few months ago that is not a view I would’ve held either, but it is one that I have been forcibly taught. I wish to give you the same lesson, though perhaps not with as blunt methods as my friends are known to use.”

Blunt is certainly one word for the Mighty Nein. “I have inherited a lot, Caleb,” he says, wishing he could soften the serrated knife of his voice. “I have been given a lot. If I cannot use it to be of service, then what right do I have to keep it?”

“Is being kind not a service?” Caleb asks, and Essek stares at him, this man who skulked into his house minutes ago and now speaks as though he were a wise man. “Is extending trust to a rag tag group of foreigners not a service?”

“It was foolishness,” Essek snaps, and Caleb pulls away as though Essek had hit him. He immediately regrets the words, but he doesn’t know how to blunt his own blows. “Had I misjudged any one of you, I would have been executed for treason.”

“I believe your judgment is better than that, even if you may not believe it,” Caleb says, though the wound has not yet faded from his eyes. It would be easier, Essek thinks, if he were not as much of a weapon as he has sharpened himself into. 

“How’s Nott?” he mumbles, hands twisting on his knees, and he almost jumps when warm fingers cover them, pausing their anxious movement. Caleb’s hands are shaking a little bit, and he himself doesn’t look entirely certain of what he’s doing, when Essek looks up into his face, but he holds onto their now locked fingers. 

“Nott is still Nott, and that is traumatic enough,” Caleb sighs, “but it is a trauma she has learned to live with. One that we can fix. But we were speaking of you.”

Essek can’t bring himself to speak—the caged bird still hangs in his throat, though the door is open and the light is just beyond it. There is safety here, in the darkness. In the cage. He doesn’t know what comes next if he alights.

“I gave up anonymity, safety, to return to Rexxentrum to save my friend,” Caleb says softly. “It happened so fast, and I did not know exactly where that road led, but… I am no longer quite as safe as I was. And that was worth it, for her. Sometimes other people are worth the risk.” Essek stares down at his fingers, Caleb’s pale hands wrapped around them, and he thinks that the warmth is spreading into his limbs. “Do you think that you might take this apathy to your grave, and to the next?”

“I fear it everyday,” Essek chokes out, and a small voice in the back of his head wonders at what point in this conversation it had become about Caleb comforting him, rather than the other way around. It is Caleb’s best friend he has failed today, and Essek cannot help but feel responsible even still.

But he knows if he suggests that again, Caleb will try to continue to comfort him, and then he’ll feel worse, so he stays silent. Silence is easier. Silence is safe.

Of course, this is not safe at all, their hands entwined, but the pressure and the warmth is so foreign and so comforting that he cannot pull away.

“Will you allow me to prove to you that I am not here merely for what use you may be able to provide me?” Caleb whispers, and Essek only now notices that they’re less than a foot apart, Caleb folded into a corner of his chair, and he swallows.

“What are you here for, then?”

“I am here because I care about you,” he says, and lets go with one hand. Essek’s soul protests the movement, until Caleb’s thumb brushes against his chin gently, pulling his gaze to Caleb’s. “I am here because I enjoy spending time with you. And because… I am interested in you.”

Essek isn’t sure he’s heard the last sentence right, nor that he’s interpreting it accurately. Neither of them are speaking in their native tongue, and he takes a moment to process what seems to be an admittance of some kind of… interest? 

Caleb is interested in him.

Essek leans forward and presses his lips to Caleb’s, softly at first, gentle as butterfly wings. Soft enough to take back, in case he needs to. His eyes closed, the moment feels like an eternity, but just as quickly Caleb leans into him, the fingers that were on his chin catching his jaw in earnest now, and it’s hard to quite pinpoint when their kiss becomes something more, teeth tugging lips and tongues flickering over teeth. 

Caleb is already nearly crouching at his feet, and Essek pulls him onto the cushion beside him, pressed just close enough together in one chair. His fingers tangle in Caleb’s red hair, absorbing the warmth, and he can feel the ice melting away like the sun had risen in his sitting room. Like it’s heating the cold earth that has always awaited him, a bitter end as lonely as a grave. 

And certainly a grave awaits him, eventually, as it does them all, but perhaps it does not have to be so cold and solitary after all. Not when his life can be this warm, pressed neatly into Caleb’s side, folded into each other.

He pulls his lips away to breathe shallowly, his forehead pressed against Caleb’s, their noses ghosting off of each other, and Caleb exhales deeply. 

“Is that enough to prove what I think of you, Shadowhand, or will I have to continue to prove my loyalty?”

Essek moves to protest, but when he opens his eyes, he sees the crooked grin on Caleb’s face. It is mirrored on his own, a smile that feels natural like a smile has not in a long time. He closes his eyes and leans into Caleb again, softly. “Perhaps you should continue to prove it. That way I don’t forget.”

Caleb laughs, a golden sound, and catches Essek’s face once again, pulled together in this moment that could last an instant or an infinity.

His heart flutters like a bird, alight from its cage at last.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This episode broke me! I'll go back to sobbing until next week!


End file.
